Opinion by Kyle A. Lohmeier
Most American caucazoid persons know that there are certain words and phrases they can simply never say in regards to persons of color; not even if you’re such a big Kendrick Lamar fan that you got up so close to the stage that he pulls you up on it to speak along with the words he wrote – you still can’t say the “n” word. Seen much of Mel Gibson, lately? Can anyone even confirm that Michael Richards is still alive?
Seemingly oblivious to the rules of racial decorum in this nation, Roseanne Barr unleashed a truly stupid, racist tweet Tuesday night and hours later ABC announced her rebooted show had been canceled. Barr, for some reason, saw it fit to describe a now-irrelevant former adviser to a former president as being the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Planet of the Apes film franchise. Why anyone would be discussing Valerie Jarrett in 2018 is rather beyond me; why anyone would say something so obviously racist and really stupid about her when doing so could cost them a career makes no sense at all.
How gleefully the rank-and-file liberal has taken the news on social media is almost as disgusting as Barr’s tweet itself. Of course, to the average liberal, Roseanne’s downfall is cathartic on many, many levels. First, her recent return to the limelight was predicated entirely upon her support of Donald Trump and his presidency – this already made her the rare Hollywood type that liberals actually hate. Plus, she was already wealthy with the show’s first successful run and her own nut farm in Hawaii – and hell knows liberals hate wealthy people not called “Soros,” “Clinton” or (inexplicably) “Sanders.”
It’s also cathartic because to the rank-and-file butthurt liberal, the system of actual justice in this nation is “rigged.” Of course it is, but not in the way they imagine. This has given rise to the “social justice movement” and ABC reacting very, very quickly to cancel the entire show is the exact sort “justice” social justice warriors demand when their feels are hurt, and applaud when they get it. Of course, social justice has no actual relationship to real justice. Real justice seeks to hold the individual who harmed the person or property of another responsible for their actions. Social justice seeks to destroy anyone who hurt a SJW’s feels; anyone tangentially related to the target who gets hurt probably deserved it anyway.
And, there will be lots of people harmed by ABC’s social justice move – none of whom sent out a racist Tweet on Tuesday night. Michael Fishman, the actor who played DJ Conner, hadn’t worked in television prior to the “Roseanne” reboot since 2011; and that was playing himself on the “reality show” about Barr’s nut-farm for one episode. Lecy Goranson, the original Becky Conner, hadn’t worked since 2016 and then on an episode of “Inside Amy Schumer,” the poor thing. The second Becky, Sarah Chalke, obviously keeps busy and will be just fine as will John Goodman. The rest of the cast? Who knows? The crew? They’ll eventually find work elsewhere as is the nature of the industry, but that’s not to say that losing what could have been a steady gig is fun or easy.
So, Roseanne Barr has now been punished for expressing her dumb ideas. ABC gets to look like they’ve done something to help the world and in the process assuage the SJWs, who vicariously feel as though they’ve done something in the fight against racism. But they haven’t; they couldn’t because ABC never gave them the opportunity.
A far better way of handling this matter by ABC would have been to rebuke and reprimand Barr for her awfulness in a very public way (it’s ABC, they could do this); and then let viewers and sponsors decide whether or not the entire thing that is “Roseanne” the television show should be destroyed to punish Roseanne Barr, the once-self-styled-socialist who has had a long habit of doing and saying incredibly dumb things from time to time. If the eyeballs did go away from the show, those eyeballs couldn’t be sold to advertisers and the show becomes economically unviable; canceling it at that point would be a responsible on ABC’s part. And, it would have given actual people, not Disney execs, the opportunity to judge Roseanne Barr and determine whether or not the entire cast and crew should suffer for her tweets.
Leave a Reply